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Check to see if the hard drive is being seen by the
BIOS. If it is not being seen, it is either not being seen
by the BIOS, Motherboard is bad, IDE cable is bad, or the drive
is bad. Use the
Hard Drive Troubleshooter.

The bios may have a feature that allows you to boot to a USB
device. If this is turned on and you do not have a bootable USB
device connected, the system will appear to be hanging on boot
up. The system is trying to boot to the USB device but since the
USB device is not bootable, it will hang there. It will
eventually time out and continue to boot to windows. If you do
not have a bootable USB device, go into the BIOS and disable
this feature. The location is different depending on the bios.
Some have it under Integrated devices under USB Emulation. You
set the emulation to no boot. See the manual of your system for
the specific information on your bios.
Click here for more information.

If you can get into safe mode, it may be software. You may
want to try the
Software Troubleshooter before going any farther on this
page. If the software troubleshooter doesn't help or you can't
get to safe mode, continue the steps on this page.

This could be a software issue or a hardware issue. You can
try the software troubleshooter to see if it is software. If
it doesn't fix the issue you can try the steps below. (the
software troubleshooter does have some drastic steps that you
may not want to do till you try the steps below to rule out
hardware before doing the drastic steps (i.e.
you may want to do the steps on this page before erasing the
operating system))

Check to see if anything looks burned or charred. You might
have had a power surge. (Surge protectors
are designed to protect the system from this but the system can
still be harmed even with a surge protector installed)

Run diagnostics on your motherboard and
memory. Set the diagnostics to run at least 20 passes on the
memory. It will take hours to run that many passes on the
memory but
memory can pass the diagnostics on the first few passes but
fail as a load is put on the
memory.
Click here to download memory diagnostics.
For motherboard
diagnostics, see the motherboard manufacturer for them.

If after doing the above steps and the problem goes away when the
hard drive is removed and the diagnostics pass on the hard drive,
you may have a software issue. Be sure to follow the
Software Troubleshooter.

DISCLAIMER:UpgradeNRepair (UNR), the owner, and any representatives of UpgradeNRepair (UNR)
is not liable for any data loss or hardware failure because of the following
procedure. The Information provided is a guide to assist the customer with
an issue with their system or software. The procedures offered here may or may
not harm your files. Even procedures that are not designed to harm files, can
harm files, depending on the issue with the system. Because there is too many
unknowns, UpgradeNRepair is unable to guarantee the safety of the files.
Customer is responsible for their data and their actions. Before following
the directions on this page and the pages these links are linked to, any data
the customer does not want to lose will have to be saved. Saving the data is
the sole responsibility of the customer. Some or all of the following procedures
or information may not apply to your situation.